What Is She On About?

I was sitting at breakfast and told, “You know why guys don’t date you, right?”
I made a mental list in my head: Is it because I play a virtual game of soccer while I sleep? Is it because I find farts to be hilarious? Is it because I don’t eat pizza? The list, really, was endless and my mind boggled.
I wanted to get a pen and paper and make a list under the heading, ‘What I Have Been Researching For Years’.
“It is because you are too honest. It is unrealistic.”
“Oh.” I put away my hypothetical notebook. “So They don’t have a problem with the fart stuff?”

Sex is a weird aberration of nature. It is, as we are routinely told, the most natural thing you can do [unless you introduce synthetic costumes...but the premise remains the same]. Everyone does it, we are Here because of it, yet the moment it is vocalized on a routine basis, people get scared and hide under the sheets. And not in the good way.

It seems that it is one thing to have sex, but it is quite another to talk about having sex.

People strip for money, have sex for money, have one night stands, have no strings attached sex, have threesomes, have affairs, have orgies, do boys, do girls, do boys and girls, do missionary, doggy, reverse cowgirl, upside, downside, inside, outside.

And people fall in love.

For too long, people have been insecure, jealous, envious, deceptive and dishonest about what they do. People hide behind, “It is private”. Which, it is. [Unless you are in porn]. But you don’t have to tell everyone. Just the ones who matter. People’s reluctance to talk about having sex leads to misunderstandings, misjudgements and miss-matched affections.
“I don’t want to know that my girlfriend slept with a different guy every week before I met her,” a friend told me.
“Why?”
“Because…She is my girlfriend.”
Exactly. So why wouldn’t you want to know?

If ones goal is to find a Soul Mate, or the Twenty-First Century equivalent (Aside: I believe they are called “Husband Number One” or similar), then why wouldn’t you want them to know everything about you? We delve so much into our fears, our desires, our goals. Why don’t we have pride in the frivolous side of life that has brought us so much heartache, so much joy and so many hangovers?
“One reason is jealousy,” one of my very confident boy friends informed me. “And then there is the Madonna-Whore syndrome.”

In the traumatic event that Someone cheats on us, we rant about dishonesty. We want to know every detail and dwell in the audacity that Someone We Loved didn’t have the decency to inform us that they were unfaithful.
But maybe finding out that Your boyfriend was double-teaming a midget wouldn’t be so shocking if questions had been asked to begin with.
“What was your attitude to sex, the opposite sex [and the same sex] before we started dating?”
“Have you ever cheated? And if so, why?”
“Are you into donkeys? Because I’ve gotta tell you something…”
We want to know what makes Them tick in every other area. But we forget about sex. The reason we are Here in the first place.

I have been in a relationship where I didn’t ask questions about Who he was. He had a whole other girlfriend. For months I was devastated, wondering why someone would do that to me. And then I realized, I could have altered the outcome had I bothered to ask some questions.

It would have broken the fantasy. But the reality would have been better.

I never want to be that idiot again, working on assumption that only leads to an incorrect imagination. I want to know everything – the good, the bad, the girlfriend – so that true intimacy can develop. And I want other people to accept people for who they are, for what they did and where they are going. Because intimacy comes from honesty. They are married together long before You and Him [or Her. Or Her and Her. Or Him and Him].
Ignorance is not bliss.
Honesty is.
And if someone can’t handle that, it is Their problem. Not Yours.

I have sat at breakfast, admiring a boy who I thought was brilliant, and asked myself, “What if he doesn’t like me because I have had one night stands?”
Then I realized that was how I met him. And I don’t have a problem with him for having a one-night-stand. And if he doesn’t like me because I do and I have, then that is His problem. Not Mine.
Sexual freedom didn’t just happen. Sexual equality was fought for. It should all be taken seriously. Because it is serious fun.

It is dangerous territory if we let ignorance make the decision. Maybe He wants to be with someone He doesn’t know completely. Maybe She is happy that Her boyfriend’s friends know more about Him.

But I don’t want to know nothing.

I want to know everything.

And I want us to be honest with each other.

Otherwise, romance isn’t dead. Intimacy is. [Minus the farts].

© Sall